Google And Microsoft Support Open ID Login Scheme

Google and Microsoft have thrown their support behind a scheme to allow people to use one name and password on lots of different websites.

Both companies have announced plans to sign-up their users into the Open ID scheme, meaning it will soon be able to add more than 400 million users to the initiative.

Other companies such as Yahoo and AOL are also backers of the single sign-on plan.

Open ID is set up so that users don’t have to have a different login identity and password for almost every website.

An Open ID identifier user can log in to, and use, any and every other site that has signed up to the scheme.

Microsoft and Google took seats on the board of the Open ID Foundation in 2007. However, both are only now releasing the tools and technology to work with the scheme.

Microsoft announced on October 28 that it was starting technical trials that would lead to all the users of its Windows Live service being enrolled in Open ID in 2009.

Trial tests are being done for select websites to see how Microsoft is working with the Open ID standards, and how to go about accepting that version as a login identifier.

Similar plans by Google will test its implementation of the Open ID technology, allowing other websites to use logins for Gmail and other Google services alongside their own ID systems.

Open ID has been accepted as a login route for about 10,000 websites so far. But more than 750 million user accounts will be enrolled in the system once both trials by Google and Microsoft are complete.

Still, some critics are concerned that much of the backing for Open ID is only one-way.

Other sites are being allowed to accept Google and Microsoft logins in place of their own. But as of now the two are not accepting other Open ID credentials to login to their services.